Give It A Chance [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on August 7, 2026 by davidrobinsoncreative

We generally keep a few sweet potatoes in the basket so we have the necessary ingredients for a spontaneous batch of our fave sweet potato black bean chili. Last summer one of our sweet potatoes sprouted so rather than toss it we planted it. The resulting vine was gorgeous and threatened to wrap the deck. We loved it so much that this summer we purposefully let one of the sweet potatoes send out alien tendrils. “It’s ready!” we exclaimed and then we dashed outside and planted it.

Someday we will start earlier in the season, planting a sweet potato or two so that we might grow sweet potatoes. There isn’t enough time between now and snowfall for a harvest. This year, like last year, the effort is purely aesthetic. It gives us yet another reason to rush outside in the morning and exclaim, “Lookit!” It is an intentional spirit-lift.

More so than any other time in my life I am aware of how responsible I am for the care and tending of my own spirit uplift. We planted the sweet potato with the express purpose of giving ourselves a reason to marvel. The more I claim my capacity to cultivate joy, the more opportunities I see. The opportunities are never grand. They are, in fact, the formerly mundane, the easily missed. We grow rosemary so we can crush the leaves between our fingers, for the pure delight of the scent. I tend the birdbath for the giggle it gives me when I spy a robin or sparrow splashing around, a kiddie in a kiddie pool. We literally take time to smell the coffee; every day.

For us, the road to fulfillment does not run through a palace or a yacht – a thing. It is the taste of mint-from-the-garden and lemon slices in the sun tea, a warm baguette and sip of wine, the orange line of day lilies, a long slow walk at sunset. Paying attention. Understanding that no day is ever the same, no moment is ever unremarkable. A sprouted sweet potato can be a source of happiness, if only we give it a chance.

THAT MORNING SOMEDAY on the album BLUEPRINT FOR MY SOUL ©️ 1997 Kerri Sherwood

Kerri’s music (think of the riches in that phrase for a moment) is available on iTunes and streaming on Pandora

read Kerri’s blogpost about SWEET POTATO

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Be In It [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on July 31, 2026 by davidrobinsoncreative

It is tempting in times like these to just-try-and-get-through-it. I daily remind myself to not throw away my limited time on this earth. Rather than just-get-through I want to be fully-in-it.

No matter what devastation, what havoc and chaos the current administration wreaks on the nation, the ugliness of ICE, the incessant assault on our rights, the sunrise is not to be missed. Dogga wakes us each morning at first light. We hear his gentle clackity-clack, paws on the hardwood floor when he is awake and ready for his old-dog breakfast.

The smell of coffee brewing. The sun on my face. The taste of a tomato plucked from our vine. Fresh cut basil leaves. An evening walk through the marina. A day that I will never ever live again. I do not want to get through it. I want to immerse in it, all of it.

I want to feel enraged at the corruption and abuse. I want to feel shocked at the hypocrisy. I do not want to delude myself that it cannot touch me. Other people’s pain.

I want to fully appreciate the person who reached the top shelf in the grocery store for the elderly woman in the scooter. I want to savor the music in the park and my community that gathers to enjoy it. The extraordinary in the ordinary. The message, a reminder, chalked on the path adjacent to a bench, “Sit down and enjoy the view.” Don’t fall into the trap of just getting through. Sit down. Feel the cool breeze coming off the lake. Allow yourself to marvel at the color of the sails glowing orange and pink in the sunset.

THE WAY HOME on the album THIS PART OF THE JOURNEY ©️ 1998 Kerri Sherwood

Find Kerri’s albums here or streaming here

read Kerri’s blogpost about ENJOYING THE VIEW

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Study With Dogga [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on July 10, 2026 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Why do so many of us, as we grow into so-called maturity, become dull, insensitive to joy, to beauty, to the open skies and the marvellous earth?” ~ Krishnamurti, Think On These Things

Dogga, in his old age, is doing what my father did in his last years. He sits on the back deck and watches the world. He is not watching the world go by. No! He is taking the world in. I imagine that he marvels at the beauty of it all. The robins taking dirt baths, the squirrels robbing grape jelly from the oriole feeder, the mint and lavender, the smell of earth after the rain. His appreciation of every-little-thing comes from contentment. After a life-long journey he feels no need to achieve or change a thing.

I am watching him and learning. His joy is immediate, quiet and boundless.

The Buddhist tradition posits that desire is the source of all suffering. The desire to be some-other-place. The desire to be some other person. The desire to attain some new thing. Separation from self is separation from the current moment. Dogga, like Columbus in his backyard meditations, is empty of desire, opening present-space for the fullness of life.

Though I cannot claim to be free of desire, I experience those moments sometimes. I drop-in. We walk along the lake after the rain, cool air off the water breaking the heat of the day. Holding hands, we marvel at the sailboat braving the lake so soon after the violence of the storm. She stops to take a picture and I am suddenly open space, empty of desire, beauty rushing in. It is neither too enormous nor too small. I am not a witness or performer. I am simply marveling. Part of. And then, with the thought that it is fleeting, comes the ache, the desire to hold on to all of it. I laugh, knowing better but not able to practice what-I-think-I-know.

Clearly, I have more learning to do (another desire!) and will happily study Dogga. How does he do it? How does he immerse in the beauty of it all and yet not yearn for it to last forever?

WHEN THE FOG LIFTS on the album THIS PART OF THE JOURNEY ©️ 1998 Kerri Sherwood

Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes and streaming on Pandora

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE SAILBOAT

www.kerrianddavid.com

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The Order Of Things [David’s blog on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on July 1, 2026 by davidrobinsoncreative

It had been over a month since we walked our loop trail. Walking a loop is good for processing life since no navigation is necessary. Keep walking and you will arrive back where you started.

We had a ton of life to process. It is remarkable what happens in a life in a month.

While processing life it is not uncommon for us to stop mid-sentence for a photo-treasure-op. A Downy Wood Mint paused our conversation. At the beginning of our relationship I found it jolting when I was in the middle of a full-blown-rant and Kerri broke off to snap a photograph. It was disorienting. I’d lose my rant-thread. “Now, what were you saying?” she’d ask after her photography deviation.

Now I understand and appreciate the order of things: beauty before rant. In fact, after I stopped being surprised by her spontaneous-photo-combustion, I understood that I was not being dis-oriented; rather I was being re-oriented. A good rant should never stand in the way of appreciation of the moment. Like most people on earth, I have missed a raft of the miraculous because I was too busy complaining about days-gone-by. I missed the greater by insisting on the lesser.

Our loop-walking has made me easier in the world. If I lose my rant-thread in a moment of nature-admiration, then it was probably not worth hanging onto in the first place. It is amazing how a pause for beauty or a moment of simple appreciation can lessen or even transform the forest fire burning in my brain.

“Now, what were you saying?”

“I honestly can’t remember.” A spontaneous pause on our loop to visit the tiny purple Downy Wood Mint cooled and soothed my mind.

read Kerri’s blogpost about DOWNY WOOD MINT

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Do The Opposite [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on June 1, 2026 by davidrobinsoncreative

I am not a Gnostic nor do I identify as Christian but I very much appreciate a bit of text from the Gospel of Thomas: The Kingdom of the Father is spread upon the earth, and men do not see it. I pulled it up on my magic computer to find what comment the AI master might offer: “…divinity is staring us right in the face in our daily lives, but our earthly preoccupations, illusions, and dogmas make us blind to it.” 

It is right in front of us. We do not see it.

When I was younger I learned to meditate. I was chasing presence. More than once I came to the hysterical realization that my chase was in fact doing the opposite of what I intended. Presence is not something that can be chased. Rather, it is experienced when stopping the chase. Stand still and breathe. Feel. See.

I recently had a conversation about connection and control. It brought me around again to what I learned in the folly of my chase. There are so many things I thought I could control – many that I didn’t know that I was trying to control – and my efforts to control brought me a mountain of frustration and nothing more. I found it an exercise in futility, a seemingly impossible task, to try and control my illusion of controlling. Just as presence cannot be chased, controlling cannot be controlled. One day, in a flash of no-duh, I understood that all I need do is the opposite: connect to the moment instead of trying to control it.

It was right in front of me all along. Control is born of fear. It is to erect a barrier, to contract. Connection is the opposite. It expands. It releases. How many times have I learned that the heaven I seek is available and visible if I simply stop, let go, or turn around and look? How many times have I learned that what I sought was right in front of me, patiently waiting for me to open my eyes.

read Kerri’s blogpost about HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT

www.kerrianddavid.com

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Take A While [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on May 12, 2026 by davidrobinsoncreative

“You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.”

~ John O’Donohue

Even now the cardinal is singing. The early sun warms the quilt covering our feet as we write. Our morning practice of writing blogs together is never rushed. We tease that the editors are tapping their feet, unhappy with our dedication to meditative process evolution. Since we both seem to have issues with authority it is among our favorite games to torture our imaginary editors who are terminally deadline-driven and burdened with our snail’s pace, our too-generous-very-slow writing practice. The editors hate that I stare out the window and daydream. They roll their eyes when Kerri says, “This may take a while.” They desire us to be more “nose to the grindstone”. And isn’t that a happy phrase!

She tells me that it is impossible to get a good photograph of the white trillium unless it is in the shade or the day is cloudy. The sun bounces off the white petals and blows out the image. The day was cloudy so she was excited to find the perfect trillium. While she knelt to take her photograph I closed my eyes and stood still. It is what I do now when we stop for a photo op. Listen and feel. It is good advice to take refuge in your senses; to open up.

Though I adore his poem I imagine that John O’Donohue had it backwards. The soul does not come to take you back. I imagine it has been there all along, waiting. It knows that sooner or later we stop trying to find “it” in some distant future or some grand achievement. Soul waits for us to stop running. It waits for us to stand still enough to recognize that “it” never required a chase or proof-of-worth or acquisition. We at long last stop and take it back.

It’s hard to see anything with your nose to a grindstone – except a grindstone. The last time they were pushing me to hurry-up-and-finish I told the editors that the words “puritan” and “punitive” sounded remarkably similar. They “blew a gasket.” My soul smiled. I closed my eyes and felt the sun warming the quilt covering our feet. I asked Kerri if she was ready to read and she said, “Not yet. This may take a while.”

***

“You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.”
― John O’Donohue

read Kerri’s blogpost about WHITE TRILLIUM

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Everyday, Everyday [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on May 11, 2026 by davidrobinsoncreative

Sometimes it feels as if this great big old universe pops us on the head. It wants our attention. It wants us to hear its music beyond the noisy ruckus. This is one of those times.

Many months ago, late at night while Kerri was sleeping, I came across a video called, The Life We Have. I wasn’t paying too much attention and thought it was a hiking video so I clicked on it. I was not prepared for what I saw. At the end I had to stifle my sobs so I didn’t wake Kerri. So, when last week it popped up again in our feed, I told her she had to see it: Rob Shaver, living with stage four cancer for over 20 years, squeezing every ounce of gratitude he can from the life he has. His story is raw. His telling is pure. We both sobbed.

The next day L sent us a video of a man, a friend and teacher, speaking of orienting his life toward gratitude.

The next day D told us of his dedication to live from a place of generosity: generosity in thought, in action, in spirit.

The next day, while sitting in the backyard, seven vultures dropped from the clouds – seven – riding the thermals, spiraling low, just over our heads, and then circling higher and higher until they disappeared again into the clouds. It was gorgeous. Symbolically they represent purification and transformation. “I guess we’d better start paying attention,” I said.

In this past decade, ours has been a path of fire. Layers of dross and armor have been burned away. Bags of life-garbage have been reduced to cinders. We have no illusion that we are garbage-free but we are certain that the junk no longer dominates our view. We are not nearly as invested in murky grievances as once we might have been. We’re more and more clear-eyed in appreciating the moment we’re in and less and less interested in being anywhere else. More and more we hear the music in all things.

“The best thing you can do for your lungs is sing,” Rob Shaver said. This from a man who runs miles a day, a man whose lungs are filled with tumors. ‘”Everyday, everyday, everyday, everyday, everyday…be grateful for the life you have.”

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE MUSIC

www.kerrianddavid.com

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The Sound of Peace [David’s blog on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on April 22, 2026 by davidrobinsoncreative

There’s a mourning dove serenading us as we write. I love their song. They make me think of Bali. Each morning I took early meditation walks to the song of mourning doves. For me, they are the sound of peace.

Our Airbnb was on the grounds of a Catholic retreat center. After a long day of freeway driving it was a special treat to leave the known world and enter a patch of earth dedicated to quiet and reflection. Our host told us that we were welcome to walk the grounds so, after unloading our bags, we wandered the woods and slow-walked the roads. I was once again reminded how profound – and immediate – is the impact of our environment on us. Aggression evokes aggression. We meet the violence of the news-of-the-day with anger and fear. We are not as independent, not nearly as separate, as we like to believe. Environment shapes behavior. David Abram wrote that presence (a quiet mind) is nearly impossible in the incessant goal-driven noise of the USofA.

And, so, we stepped into the woods. The harried drive dropped from our shoulders, the frenetic game of freeway leap-frog dissipated. I imagined the trees breathed in our weariness and exhaled ease into our bones. We relished the vibrant colors elicited by the setting sun. We stood still and absorbed the bird song. We strolled by the nun’s residence and I wondered what a life lived in retreat might awaken.

I wondered what this nation might become if it honored quiet truth as much a noisy distraction…and then I let that thought go. It was a remnant of the freeway, a disturbance from another world. It called my attention away from the song of the mourning dove.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE CENTER

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Come In Empty [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on February 27, 2026 by davidrobinsoncreative

“In emptiness alone can there be creation.” ~ Krishnamurti

Horatio reminded me of a fundamental lesson in actor training: come in empty.

The great actor/director James Edmondson once told me that the art of acting is the art of presence. What is presence if not full availability, without need to achieve or to force action or to manipulate anything? Stand empty in a moment, open to all possibilities.

Saul the tai-chi master taught his students to look beyond the “obstacle” and place their eyes in the field of all possibilities. No resistance. No story. No need. More than once he said to me, “Let the energy move you.” Don’t fight. Don’t push. Relax. Empty.

We are cleaning out our home, emptying closets and shelves, and have more than once affirmed to each other that we are opening space to “allow the new to come in”.

Our candlelight walk through the woods was transformative. I stepped onto the path with a very busy, very distressed mind. As we walked my anxiety slipped away. The stars became more important than the thoughts raging in my mind. I quieted. We quieted. The woods came alive – or we – I – came alive in the woods. When I stepped onto the path I was tired. As we completed our second loop, leaving the path, I felt rejuvenated. Enlivened. Empty mind.

As we came around the corner of the Pringle Center on our way back to the car, a row of pine trees caught us. They were glowing. The light cast from the center combined with a crystal clear night made them shimmer. They beckoned. Kerri took their portrait saying, “Photographs can’t capture the light. They don’t do them justice.” She put away the camera and we stood for a moment agog at the glow, enthralled by what we’d passed-by merely an hour before, unnoticed.

Awe. Ever present and available when coming in empty.

HOPE on the album THIS SEASON © 1998 Kerri Sherwood

Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes and streaming on Pandora

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE TREES

www.kerrianddavid.com

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Drop Into The Moment [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on December 30, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

In the summer months the deer trails are difficult to spot. In the winter, the opposite is true. With the absence of foliage and a clean canvas of snow, while the deer remain elusive, their well-traveled pathways are easy to see.

In mythology, deer are often messengers or guides. They call us to kindness, presence and remind us to trust our instincts. I especially appreciate the call to presence since it is there that kindness and the purity of instinct can be found.

Retribution is about past grievance. Fear is a monster born of an imagined future. Both retribution and fear would have us turn our backs on the present moment. They would have us ignore the deer because they cannot survive in the present moment. The present is, after all, the only place that is actually real, substantial. It is in the realm-of-the-real that kindness abounds; it is the only place that the quiet voice of intuition can be heard.

It never fails. When we see a deer on the trail our laundry list of woes immediately evaporates. The deer calls us into the present. We stop all movement just as the deer has stopped. It models presence for us. We drop into the moment with it. We feel. We listen. We meet its eyes. It senses us and we sense it. There is no past grievance or future fear. There is nothing more important to do or a place more compelling to be. Time suspends. We fill ourselves with the awe of the relationship-of-the-moment.

And then, just as quickly, the deer leaps and is gone. It releases us. We reenter time. Refreshed. Giddy. Light of spirit. Reminded once again of the power of living in the present.

In the presence of the deer we are no longer lost in our minds. That is its message to us, its encouragement for how to best live our lives.

In the summer months we convince ourselves that they are rare, hard to spot. In the winter months, we are reminded by their tracks that, although we may not see them, these guides are all around us. Their message to us is always available. Always.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE DEER

http://www.kerrianddavid.com

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